Part I: Maintenance policy and strategy
1. Concept
1.1.Policy
Policy statement, document published by administrative bodies
Relevant laws, preamble and announcements
Court decision
Procedures manuals ,standards
1.2. Maintenance
Maintenance is done to ensure that the road that has been constructed or
improved to the extent possible in its original condition.
Maintenance is the range of activities necessary to keep a road and
associated structures in an acceptable condition for road users as intended
when it was designed and constructed to carry out its task
1.3. Sustainability
The sustainability review should be based not just on engineering issues but
on a wider sustainability environment and may be based on the historical
evidence of the operation and maintenance of the existing roads.
1.3.1 Politically supported – the road project must be clearly supported at
the relevant local authority level as well as at Ministerial level.
1.3.2 Socially acceptable – the local people (stakeholders) must benefit in
the long-term from the road upgrade.
1.3.3 Economically viable – the economic benefits from using the upgraded
road (for example, the development opportunities) must be greater than
the economic costs.
1.3.4 Financially sound – there must be adequate funding in place for
construction and long-term maintenance of the improved road.
1.3.5 Institutionally possible – the organizations and bodies responsible for
constructing and maintaining the road must have the necessary
resources and knowledge.
1.3.6 Technically appropriate – the proposed road design must be
compatible with its intended function and its physical environment.
1.3.7 Environmentally sustainable – the road construction as well as its
subsequent use and maintenance should not cause significant
environmental damage.
2. Maintenance issues
Policy
o The focus on roads ignores the need to preserve the overall rural road
network in a reasonable condition
o Lack of Establishing clear ownership and responsibility for managing the
road network;
o Lack of taking decisions and passing laws to ensure steady financing.
o No clear policy statement on the management of the overall network is
available .
o A proper assessment of physical and financial requirements of
maintenance of rural
Serviceability
o Network availability
o passability
o tafficabilty
o standards
o priority strategies
Customer Demand
o safety, availability, accessibility
Operation parameters
o Survey
o Maintenance works
Asset valuation
Road safety
sustainability
o efficiency
o cost
o environment
Quality
o Standards
o Rules and procedures
Maintenance financing
o Funding for road maintenance inadequate
o Available funds poorly managed
o Dedicated maintenance funds used otherwise
o Inability to justify maintenance expenditures
o Level of financing
o Source of financing
Management capacity
o Insufficiently trained maintenance personnel
o Underdeveloped private sector for maintenance activities
o Inappropriate technology
3. Policy frame work
1.1. Vision
1.2. Mission
Ensuring Network serviceability
o Network availability (NW availability, trafficability, passability)
o Achieving Network integrity (consistence standards)
o Maintain Network reliability (level of service that meets users
demand)
o Enhancing quality
Network safety
o Reducing traffic accident
o Safe transport system
o Providing adequate safety standards
Network sustainability
o Maximizing value
o Minimizing cost
o Minimizing environment
o Improve effectiveness and efficiency
1.3. Objectives
1.4. Standard
1.5. Performance
4. Goal and Objectives
4.1. Goal
The goal of maintenance policy and strategy is to keep a road and associated
structures (culverts, drift, bridges and retaining wall) in an acceptable
condition for road users to achieve economic, and social benefits of access and
travel, as intended when the road workswere designed and constructed.
4.2. Objectives
4.2.1 Ensuring Network serviceability
4.2.2 Prolongs the life of the road by reducing the rate of deterioration, thereby
safeguarding previous investments in construction and rehabilitation, To
promote the efficient movement of people and goods. in order to support
sustainable economic development
4.2.3 lowers the cost of operating vehicles on the road by providing a smooth
running surface, and Keep the road open for traffic contributes reliable
transport service
4.2.4 keeps the road open on a continuous basis by preventing it from becoming
impassable.
4.2.5 To provide an improved level of service
4.2.6 To provide a safe transport system that meets mobility, social and
economic objectives without killing or damage its users (Safety,
availability, accessibility ) The cost of traffic crashes.
Economic costs to society
Prove service continuity (Sustainability)
Minimize environmental damage
4.2.7 To create sustainable road network
5. Scope
The scope of maintenance policy and strategy manual is for low volume rural roads
defined by the following categories:
5.1. Rural roads
5.2. Wereda roads
5.3. Community roads, paths
6. Strategies
o Assessing the rate of deterioration in condition of the network
o Assessing the road network needs and objectives of the road users (customers
demand).
o Set maintenance priority strategy Selecting most cost-effective option for
maintenance priorty
o Encourages participatory mechanism (stakeholders)
o Capacity building
o Capacity building for communities and local
o Technical support
o Use appropriate maintenances technology
o Labor base ,Machine base
o mixed
o safety audit/ reviews, documentation, and funding requests for municipal
agencies seeking federal funding
o Define and update network record
o Apply Contact management
o For routine , e.g. length person
o For periodic, e.g. petty contact /performance …
o Application of Maintenance efficiency through the application of
different technologies (PMS, BMS,Traffic survey and analysis system,
Supply and management system
o Set-up Safety standards, rules and regulation
o Strategy developed to significantly improve safety and security across
all modes
o Consistent safety regulation across all roads
o Application of ‘safe system’ principles to all road and land use design
and development
o Assess current and future practice
2.1 Service performance standards
Network availability
A network should be recorded and reported annually as part of asset
management.
Road closer
Main roads
All main roads (trunk and link) should not closed more than 14 days . permanent and
temporal (detour) solutions should be undertake.
Rural roads
All rural roads should not closed more than 21 days . permanent and temporal
(detour) solutions should be undertaken.
URRAP roads
All URRAP roads should not closed more than 30 days . permanent and temporal
(detour) solutions should be undertaken.
Community roads
All community roads that serve special purpose (cash crop, aid)should not closed
more than 15 days should not closed more than 30 days . permanent and temporal
(detour) solutions should be undertaken.
Setting Priorities
Priority assessment Usually, funds allocated to maintenance will be insufficient to
meet all the identified maintenance needs. This applies to all countries. An important
component of the management cycle for programming is to prioritize maintenance
works to determine which can be carried out in the budget period, and which works
must be deferred until a later time. A variety of methods are available for
prioritization, ranging from simple ranking methods up to complex methods involving
optimization. The simplest method of prioritization is to apply a straightforward
ranking to the maintenance works depending on the severity of the defectiveness. A
slightly better method is to relate priority to the importance of the different road links
and partly to the importance of the different maintenance works, rather than
defectiveness. In such an approach, main roads are given higher priority than feeder
roads and, because of the importance of drainage, cleaning and reshaping ditches may
be given higher priority than resealing pavements. The resulting works are placed in a
list in order of their rankings and cumulative costs are applied, starting at the top of the
list. Maintenance works with the lowest rankings are rejected until the total costs of
the remaining works equals the available budget.. The main problem with ranking
models is that they do not take into account the longer-term consequences of
decisions, with the result that constrained budgets are not necessarily spent in the
optimum manner. Some more sophisticated prioritization methods are summarized in
Box 19.3. An important additional benefit of the more sophisticated prioritization
methods is that they can be used for consequence analysis. For different budgets, the
future condition of the roads, maintenance needs, and road user costs can be evaluated.
This information is particularly valuable for decisions relating to programming and
strategic planning
Usually, the financial resources available are not sufficient to carry out all the
maintenance activities identified during the road condition survey. It is therefore
necessary to set priorities for what maintenance activities and which road sections are
most important. First priority is usually given to urgent maintenance activities (i) to
ensure that the road network remains passable and basic access is provided and (ii) to
limit the extent of damages exerted to a road section. Critical elements of the drainage
system, such as culverts and drains need particular attention and first priority should
be given to the removal of obstacles which block the water passage away from the
road. Small erosion channels must be repaired before the next rains can deepen and
widen them. Both these tasks require regular inspection. Lowest priority should
generally be given to those tasks which require significant inputs and produce limited
results in terms of
prolonging the lifetime of the road (i.e. grass cutting and bush clearing).
For each maintenance operation (routine, periodic and urgent) priority lists must be
established. They may differ from area to area according to the prevailing conditions.
When priorities are set, the climatic conditions must be considered. For example,
grass cutting during the rainy season does not make sense when at the same time the
ditches and culverts are left un-touched and are becoming seriously silted.
The following table provides a list of priorities for routine maintenance according to
the climatic seasons:
7. Standards
7.1. Classification of maintenance
7.1.1. Routine
7.1.2. Periodic
7.1.3. emergency
7.2. Maintenance performance indicator
7.2.1. Routine every day/moth/grading frequency
7.2.2. Re-gravelling every 2-3 years
6.1 Inventory and Survey parameters
type frequency purpose
Road inventory 2-3 years define network record
Rapid survey annual condition needs
Detailed survey as required accurate condition
Emergency and as required urgent works and spot
improvement
spot improvement
Maintenance patrol weekly monitoring
Customer demand 1-2 years safety, availability,
accessibility etc.
Road Condition Inventory
The road condition inventory contains all the details of each individual road
in the network. The following items should be recorded:
Running Surface
The most important feature of the running surface it the cross-fall. The lack of crossfall
on the road carriage way will prevent rainwater from running off the road and lead
to accelerated deterioration of the road surface. For the user of the road, the
smoothness of the running surface is the most important feature.
Earth and gravel roads require a continuous surface maintenance. Simple indicators
for the running surface of gravel roads can be defined as follows:
Drainage
Drainage is undoubtedly the most important feature of any road. If this component of
the road fails, serious damage will occur on the remaining parts of the road. Indicators
for the drainage condition can be defined as follows
To ease inspection works, the degree of silting/blockage can be described using simple
measurements, e.g. fully blocked - half silted - correct size - eroded. Such
assessments allows the repair work required to be quantified and costed.
Structures
Inspections of structures should not only be carried out to assess their general
appearance. Thorough inspection implies checking all elements of a structure.
Elements which are not visible are usually the most important, such as
foundations, beams and bearings. The table below provides a check-list of items
which needs to be inspected on various structure elements:
6.2 Maintenance work standards
Routine maintenance
Periodic maintenance
2 Part III: Maintenance Funding
2.1 Sources
2.1.1 Fiscal Transfers
Regional
wereda
2.1.2 Locally Raised Revenues
(market and business taxes , locally produced agricultural product )
2.1.3 community Financing
2.1.4 Cost-Sharing
2.2 Budgeting and Requesting –
2.3 Allocations + Expenditures –
2.4 Control and Auditing
o allocation
o Regional Government
o Wereda
o Cost sharing
o Community ,
o NGO
o Tax/levy
Export corridor
Market crop
Community use
Other
The sustainability of all roads hinges on the timely execution of routine maintenance.
Financing maintenance requires a steady and adequate flow of funds. The local entity
responsible for local government roads must know how much it will receive and when.
Without clear allocation schedules, work programming becomes impossible, and unit costs
increase as contractors build foreseen payment delays into their costs. A rough estimate of
network maintenance requirements can be obtained by applying an asset-based approach to
financing needs
Fiscal Transfers
Fiscal Transfers to local governments from the regional government budget are the
main source of domestic funding for local government roads in many countries. The central
government sets the amount of funding allocated to local government roads. Often, transfers
are sector-specific, not given as block grants, which are unrestricted in the usual sense
Locally Raised Revenues
Local governments mobilize only modest revenues, which vary widely because of
differences in economic bases and administrative capacities. The main sources of local
revenues are often market and business taxes , locally produced agricultural product
Road fund
The main source of revenue for road funds is the levy on fuel. Because fuel is
consumed by vehicles everywhere on the entire network, the road fund should finance all
roads, not just main roads.
MANAGING AND FINANCING COMMUNITY ROADS AND PATHS
Cost-Sharing
Arrangements Cost-sharing arrangements for maintaining URRAP roads and ,community
roads and paths fulfill three important functions.
First, they constitute a financial incentive for communities to organize themselves.
Second, they expand the revenue base.
Third, they can verify demand and improve allocative efficiency. Experience in
Canada, Finland, Madagascar, Namibia, South Africa, and Sweden confirms that access to
partial funding for maintenance motivates local stakeholders to form private road associations
to maintain access roads. For example, cost-sharing arrangements for community roads in the
Canadian province of Ontario differ depending on whether or not landowners have formed a
local road board. If citizens have formed a board, the province pays two-thirds of construction
and maintenance costs; if not, the province
Legal Ownership
Ownership of community roads requires a legal framework that permits communities
and non government entities to assume management responsibility. Without a law that grants
legal ownership of a community road or path to a community, and without other incentives, it
is very difficult to engender a tangible interest that will translate into effective management
Donor financing
Recommended References
Rural Road Maintenance: Sustaining the Benefits of Improved Access
Labour-based Road Construction and Maintenance Technology Course Notes Course Notes
Situation Analysis of Rural Road Maintenance in Madhya Pradesh
Low Volume Rural Road Surfacing and Pavements A Guide to Good Practice 1
Performance Based Contracts in the Road Sector: Towards Improved Efficiency in the
Management of Maintenance and Rehabilitation (Eric Lancelot)
Transport for London Highway Asset Management Plan
Options for Managing and Financing Rural Transport Infrastructure (Christina Malmberg
Calvo)
Road engineering for development (Richard Robinson Bent Thagesen)
